


We Kings

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Advent Ficlet Challenge, Blow Jobs, Christmas, Fluff, Frottage, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Melancholy, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:29:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28122390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: Maurice and Alec, after the events of the novel and film, finding their way through the world.Written (on tumblr) with prompts from the 2020 Advent Ficlet Challenge thanks to MissDavisWrites
Relationships: Maurice Hall/Alec Scudder
Comments: 28
Kudos: 57
Collections: 2020 Advent Ficlet Challenge





	1. 1 - 'tis the Season

**Author's Note:**

> These ficlets are a coalescence of some of my headcanons about what should have happened for Maurice and Alec after the end of the novel/film, Forster's unpublished epilogue to the novel, and the fact I just love writing Advent prompt ficlets every year!
> 
> In Forster's epilogue, some time after Maurice and Alec's final meeting in the Pendersleigh boathouse the two are working as woodcutters in Yorkshire, and Maurice's sister Kitty comes across them while on holiday; unsurprisingly, the reunion brings neither sibling any joy. Maurice and Alec decide to move on to another district for fear of her returning or siccing the police on them. You can find the epilogue in full, online; Forster's "beta readers" did not like it (nor do I), so it was not made part of the final manuscript, but it is interesting to see where our men end up.

_"It must be much too cold up there alone,” said Kitty, whose idea of love, though correct, remained withered: for Maurice and Alec were at that moment neither lonely nor cold. Their favourite time for talking had been reached. Couched in a shed near their work—to sleep rough had proved safer—they shared in whispered review the events of the day before falling asleep. Kitty was included, and they decided to leave their present job and find work in a new district, in case she told the Police, or returned. -_ -from the unpublished epilogue to EM Forster’s _Maurice_

*

Alec had done his best to make them comfortable--two hole-riddled horse blankets made their nest, and between their two bedrolls they’d three more woolen ones, only slightly less smelly, so each of them could bundle himself beneath the cover of the largest one, which fit them both when they were close together. And so they were then, with Maurice’s shoulder tucked beneath Alec’s, blond head resting against Alec’s chest while he massaged the day’s work from Alec’s wrists.

“That woman you saw today, on the bicycle,” Maurice began, barely above a whisper. There was a stove in the shed, and a log shifted, making sparks. “That was my sister, Kitty.”

“It was never,” Alec protested. “What would she be doing in Yorkshire? On a bicycle.”

“I haven’t a clue, except to guess she told herself and my family she needed a holiday, when what she really needs is your axe to crack the ice around her heart, the foul witch.”

Alec tsked. “Shouldn’t talk like that about your family, even though.”

“Hang the lot of them; all they wanted was for me to find a position that would keep them lazy and well-dressed until they put me in the ground. I respect myself more now than they ever did, or would.”

Alec kissed the top of his head. “There you go with your philosophy, again,” he chided gently. “I’d agree with you, of course, but just now I think we’ve got to worry ourselves that she could come cycling past again. Or go to the police.”

Maurice sighed and burrowed his face into Alec’s shirtfront. “Can we worry tomorrow? Or tomorrow’s tomorrow?” he asked in a plaintive tone. He did not like to worry before bed.

“Fix it now, I think,” Alec said with some authority, “and worry about it not at all. Winter’s settled in hard now, and there’s less weather down south. What say you, my dear, to moving on? We can always find work, and a beautiful house like this one.” He made a sweeping gesture with one hand, indicating their mausoleum-like abode, which they pretended to like only because it was safer to sleep rough than to take rooms in a village. Each of them kept his own safety as his second priority--just after assuring the safety of his mate. “We’ll sleep easier.” As if distracted by it, he added softly, “Your pretty head,” and kissed it again.

“For everything a season, and a time for every purpose,” Maurice recited, with some irony, though his surrender was made clear by his sigh. “You’re right, of course, Alec, as ever you are.” Maurice shifted his body, feeling every ache and catch of a day’s respectable work as he did so, to embrace Alec in a way that made it easy to kiss him. For now they were warmed by the fire and their woolen nest, and they’d decided on a course, and morning was still hours away, and so Maurice would love him--caress him, cover him in kisses, take away his breath and catch it for his own--through the dark, freezing night.


	2. 2 - Bells

No more than a day after they’d decided to leave their woodcutting work behind them and move on, Alec had arranged them a ride in the back of a truck mercifully empty of its usual cargo of pigs, which would take them as far as a village called Farmoor. The driver’s brother worked on a farm there, which had need of more hands to haul grain to be shipped-- _hard work but yiz look strong enough_. They arrived midday, and the sun was high but the air was sharp enough to bite the wind out of Alec’s chest. The two made easy arrangements with the head man--were given quarters in a purpose-built shack amid other ramshackle lodgings that held an ever-rotating cadre of farmhands--and then walked the two miles into the village center, each wearing one wool mitt from a pair, with their free hands in their pockets or tucked under their opposite arms.

They bought bread and tinned meat, bottles of cheap ale, a scrap of soap, and still had coins enough that Maurice could stop in the tobacconist’s and buy a handful of cigarettes. They raced the sunset on their walk back to the farm.

The little building assigned to them had four camp beds with thin, musty mattresses; one crooked window high up in the wall, two lanterns, a tiny wooden table and two mismatched wood chairs. They scraped two metal beds across the floor until they touched, stacked mattresses to make it almost comfortable. The door had a lock, and once they were inside for the night, Alec fixed it in place.

"From country estate to gilded palace,” Maurice mused with a cheeky grin between sips of cigarette smoke. “We kings and our life of riches.”

Alec felt defensive, and it sounded in his reply. “It was you said we could live without.”

Maurice looked wounded, and reached for him, pulling him by the wrist to lie beside him on their cobbled-together double bed. “And I meant it, and believe it still.” His eyes were imploring. “Forgive me my stupid jokes. I will never regret the choices I’ve made.”

“Nor I,” Alec assured him. “It weren’t just you, giving up a different sort of life.”

“Of course not,” Maurice soothed, and reached across Alec’s chest to stub out his cigarette in a metal bowl already near-full of very old butt-ends. He leaned only partway back, pressing them together, and traced the shape of one of Alec’s curls between finger and thumb, there beside his cheek. “I can’t conceive of an adventure like you’d have had in the Argentine. You were brave to have chosen it.”

Alec flushed up with pride; he loved for Maurice to admire him. “Chose you, though,” he corrected.

“Braver still.”

Alec reached for Maurice’s shirt buttons and began to slide them from their slots, all the while Maurice nuzzled the edge of his cheek, into his hair, the tip of his nose brushing the tip of Alec’s ear. His breath was warm there, and Alec knew the sound of his tongue against his lips, knew what it meant would soon come.

Maurice raised his head, face to face, and Alec dipped his hand into his shirt front and caressed him, slid his hand down the taut side and around his back; his skin was invitingly warm beneath his clothes. Lips parted, Maurice drew in a soft breath, and just as Alec tilted up his chin to meet him in a kiss, Maurice froze and his eyebrows rose, then settled together over the bridge of his nose.

“Do you hear that?” he asked. Alec listened, heard nothing but night noises--bugs and frogs, the wind creaking a weather vane. “Listen. Bells.”

Alec frowned. “Church bells,” he shrugged, and still heard nothing. “From the village, on the wind.”

Maurice smiled softly, and with two fingertips stroked Alec’s lower lip. Alec opened his mouth slightly to accommodate the exploration. “I think of you whenever I hear chiming bells,” Maurice told him. “That night in the boathouse, the bell on the dinghy, that rang whenever the water pushed the boat against the dock. Every now and then, as I lay there kissing you, that little tinkling sound.”

“I remember,” Alec whispered, and tried to catch his fingertips between his lips. Maurice drew them away, teasing. Maurice looked intently at his mouth, and with the tip of his thumb guided it where he wanted it, fingertips against Alec’s jaw and cheek, then beneath his chin. Alec let himself be arranged to Maurice’s liking, though he felt he had never been made to wait so very long to be kissed.

Maurice’s eyes closed as he descended, and placed his lips just so between Alec’s, gently sucking, then wetting Alec’s lower lip with the tip of his tongue, all with deliberate slowness. Alec by then had both hands around his back, beneath his shirt, and stroked him, pulling him closer. Maurice hummed, and ventured with the soft tip of his tongue, between Alec’s lips, to find Alec’s tonguetip and circle it. When Alec met him there, thrusting ahead, pressing forward, Maurice drew back, just out of reach.

“Hush,” he scolded, just a whisper, just breath. In delicious frustration, Alec bit his lip between two teeth then wet his lips and let them part just enough. An invitation. Mercifully, Maurice did not make him wait, but leaned close once more, and licked his mouth open with soft, short strokes of his tongue, dipping deeper inside each time, and the fingers of one hand curled into Alec’s hair. Letting himself be kissed, Alec willed himself toward softness, though as ever he wished to be greedy, to kiss Maurice hard and deep, to come away panting with wet lips and chin, and then to kiss him again and again, their kisses enough to arouse them to wildness. What followed from there was a noisy, grasping bliss.

Maurice carried on, gentle but commanding, and each time Alec returned his kiss, he withdrew until Alec indicated surrender with a sigh, his mouth softly open, inviting more. As Maurice’s kisses grew fiercer, they broke apart for breath, and they rolled against each other, loath to break their kisses even to undress, and so they were still mostly dressed as they reached for each other, fingers and palms wetted by their running mouths. Maurice bit Alec’s chin, sucked his lip, caught Alec’s tongue between his teeth. Gasping, groaning, Alec was skating the edge when he did at last hear it--the chiming of distant bells.


	3. 3, 4 - Chilly, Deck the Halls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It helps to recall, here, that Maurice's family name is Hall.

They’d had their turn for baths, water no warmer than the air around it (but thankfully no colder), a trough the men used for the purpose fenced in but nonetheless outdoors, a few yards behind the outhouse. Maurice was smoking and reading when Alec rushed in, shuddering dramatically, his hair glistening wet.

“I call that a run for my life,” he scowled, and rubbed his hands vigorously up and down the sleeves of his jumper to get the blood running in his arms. “Remembered our soap, though.” He fished it from his trousers’ pocket and slapped it onto the little table with a grin.

“Come here, Alec.” Maurice set himself more upright and patted the bed beside him. They had a wooden comb, and Maurice went immediately after the damp tangle of wavy dark hair, knowing it would be a wild mess when they woke next morning, regardless of his attention. Alec fidgeted, picking at his fingernails, dodging away if Maurice should happen to pull at a knot. “You’re the worst sort of child about this,” he scolded, with a wide smile and affection in his tone.

“You’re rough.”

“It’s only that you’re tender-headed.” Maurice finished smoothing out the tangles, set the comb aside, and began to arrange the hair with his fingers. Gooseflesh rose on Alec’s neck, and he shivered.

“You’ll never overrule it, my dear. I don’t know why you go on trying,” Alec intoned, and gently swatted away Maurice’s hand. “Hold me, will you, I’m still frozen to my bollocks.”

“Oh, gladly, I’ll hold you.” In an instant he had bundled Alec in his arms, leaning back against their pillows. Alec dragged up one of their blankets and tucked it around his middle, thrust his arm beneath it up to the shoulder. After a moment, he exhaled something like a sigh and said, “I’m thinking of writing to my family. My mother.”

Alec hummed questioningly, encouraging him to go on.

“I don’t know what story they’ve told themselves, or other people, about where I’ve gone, or why.”

“Your sister Kitty can tell them Yorkshire,” Alec suggested.

“Indeed,” Maurice allowed. “I didn’t think or care much for it, before seeing Kitty. But I should very much like to tell them I left for love, not in disgrace. And not because they would understand it then, because of course they would not. I’m sure they would find me as repellant as ever. Moreso.”

Alec’s arm beneath the blanket slid across his waist to embrace him, a comforting, close pressure.

“It’s a much more base emotion that drives me, I’m sorry to say. I should like to shock them, and to display to them my happiness and satisfaction in a life that does not include them. Their manners and appearances. I want them to see how full up I am now, and remind them of how empty they are.” Maurice’s feelings were a jumble about this, and had been for days. He felt no shame of Alec, nor in their love, but the low-grade fever of fear they may be exposed taxed his nerves and his resentment at what he imagined his family thought of him, said about him, was like the irritating itch of a scabbed-over wound.

“Dear Mummy and sisters,” Alec ventured, “Aren’t you lonely for me now I’ve gone, and you’ve no man in your house to order about like you do. I’m down to one pair of boots and two torn jumpers, and Alec Scudder buggers me every third night, and I can’t get enough of it.” He laughed his bright, loud laugh at his brazen dirty joke and Maurice joined in.

“But every fourth night I bugger Alec Scudder,” he clarified, “and he’s so grateful for it he cries happy tears into his pillow while he bites it.”

“Dear Maurice, We can’t send a letter back because we’ve all fainted and died.”

They collapsed into laughter, eventually driving Maurice to wipe away tears, gasping, and now that he was warm, Alec shed his jumper, and climbed up to lay atop him, and they tickled and wrestled, both laughing, competing to describe the most obscene scenarios they could imagine, until they found one upon which they both agreed, and acted upon it.


	4. 5, 6, 7 - Shepherd, Joy, Blankets

It wasn’t the sun that woke them in the morning, nor birdsong nor even the bell ringing to urge them up to their day’s work. It was the cold. A slight shift of one beside the other disturbed their three blankets one way or another, exposing them to a rush of sharp air, at their feet or down one’s back or on one’s neck. Once the cold came in, sleep was impossible to find again. Instead, they nestled in closer together, tucking in the loose corners, hands tucked into each other’s nightshirts, trying to warm their noses in the curve of each other’s necks and shoulders.

“Mm, closer,” Alec slurred, his voice thick with sleep, and pulled Maurice’s arms tighter to his chest, snuggling his back against Maurice’s chest. “Why’s it have to be winter all the time?”

Maurice dug in his nose in at the top of Alec’s neck, inhaled deep, kissed him there in the hollow beneath the edge of his hair.

Alec stacked their hands against his chest and curled up his knees, tried to tuck his feet between Maurice’s ankles.

“When I was a boy I snuck in the dogs some nights. My brother and I shared a bed. Head to foot with his smelly socks in my face.”

Maurice let go a silent laugh, just breath against the back Alec’s ear, warm and then cool.

“We had two, one called Tick, and one called Joy, what was the one that made me her favourite. Followed me everywhere, all the day. She was nearly big as me, all laid out, and I’d roll up against her back like you’re doing now to me.”

“My pet,” Maurice mused.

“Guard the house,” Alec corrected. “She was for sheep, but the man what kept them said she was too stupid to be put in charge of them, drove them every wrong way, so I made a friend of her. A dog’s very good for keeping warm in a bed.”

“So’s a lovely man,” Maurice murmured, and his mouth was soft and open against the back of Alec’s neck. His hands broke free of Alec’s tangle and began to roam. “You’ve got me feeling very warm indeed.”

“That so?” Alec grinned and shut his eyes, and moved his thigh out of the way.

Maurice quick-drew up the edge of their shared blanket, right up over their heads, to close out the light, and keep in the heat.


	5. 8, 9, 10 - O Christmas Tree, Making a List, Candle

“Shall I write down ‘dogs,’ then?”

“That’s right, my dear.” Alec unlaced his boot, sitting on the edge of the bed, while Maurice had pulled one of the rickety little chairs up to the small table to make notes as they talked. “ _House_ dogs, write. Working dogs is fine in their way, never met one didn’t like me, but you wouldn’t want them inside your house. Got no manners about where they piss.”

“House dogs,” Maurice affirmed. “I’d like a comfortable armchair with a good lamp, for reading.”

“And a stool for your feet, while you’re at it,” Alec prompted.

They’d started listing the stuff of their dreams earlier that afternoon, passing time while they did their day’s assigned task of choosing and cutting a Christmas tree for the farmer’s house. He was well off enough to have four daughters, and they busied themselves dressing up every window, door, and fence post with holly sprigs and pine boughs, tied with miles of red ribbon that must be very dear but which they were quite careless with. The daughters wanted a tree to brush the ceiling, quite fat and full, and with short needles, and with their recent vocation as woodcutters somehow common knowledge, the task had fallen to Maurice and Alec to find the perfect specimen. The daughters--the littlest in the arms of the oldest, who herself could not be more than ten years of age--had been well pleased when the tree was delivered. Only after Maurice had made the girls seek their mother’s approval did the two men accept the proffered reward: two oranges each, and a stick of peppermint candy broken in half.

“One day we’ll have a proper place of our own,” Alec had asserted suddenly, as they carried the tree from the edge of the wood toward the whitewashed farm house. “We could build it.”

Maurice, taken aback, tickled but dubious, had replied, “I imagine we could. What sort of house? And what sort of land to put it on?”

And so they’d begun their list, at first chatting, and then later, in their one-room accommodation, in a little notebook Maurice kept in his bedroll. Their must-haves ranged from a good bed to an indoor bath to a pond for bathing in summer to Alec’s raft of dogs who could behave themselves indoors.

Alec, in stocking feet and having stripped off his jumper and rolled up his shirtsleeves in order to ventilate the heat of a day’s work off himself, leaned over Maurice’s back with one hand on his shoulder and the other on the chairback. Maurice tilted his head sideways to look up at his face and found him looking serious.

“How much money would that take?” he asked.

“More than we could make if we cut a thousand trees,” Maurice told him, realistic but not regretful. “More than if we shifted a hundred silos’ worth of grain.” Maurice looked back at the list and all at once hated it: an accounting of all the things they’d never have. Hours earlier, they’d been content to have only each other; now they’d spent half the day reminding themselves of their poverty. He closed his notebook and slid it away from himself, leaned back and moved to smoke. Once he’d struck the match and lit his cigarette, he touched it to a stub of candle in its brass holder on the table.

“Turn down the lantern, will you Alec? Save the oil.”

Alec did as requested, and the shadows all changed shape. He sat on their makeshift double bed, arranging pillows behind his back, and crossed his ankles, folded his hands across his middle. They were quiet a minute, the only sound Maurice’s soft inhalation, a pause, and the smooth sigh as he breathed out a dragon’s breath plume of slivery smoke.

“You look golden in the light of that candle, my dear.”

Maurice’s face softened with affection. “Do I? You’re all in dusk.”

“I’d have you for an angel.”

“If you didn’t know better.”

“I do know.”

Maurice smiled, unconvinced but not unappreciative.

“I’d give you everything you wish,” Maurice said softly, with something like pleading in his voice. “If I could, I’d give you it all, and more.”

Alec tilted his head to the side. “I’ve all I need,” he said plainly.

Crushing out the last of his cigarette, Maurice rose and stretched. “I’d string you with pearls,” Maurice told him, aware of the poetic drama, and relishing it, for his feeling for Alec was nothing if not poetical and dramatic--and since drama and poetry cost him nothing at all, he could afford to be generous. “I’d dress you in linen and silk. Perfume your pretty toes.” Here, he quick-tapped his fingertips across Alec’s bare feet. “Feed you milk and honey.” He half-undressed and lay down beside Alec, belly down on the bumpy mattress, propped on an elbow so they were face to face, in kissing distance. “If ever I can discover the means, I’ll spoil you like the prince you are.”

Alec touched Maurice’s hair, and his cheek.

“If I’m a prince, then we’re princes together.”

They slotted their fingers together, palm to palm, and studied each other’s faces.

“My dear Maurice,” Alec murmured, “I’ve everything I’ll ever need.”


	6. 11, 12, 13 - Dashing Through the Snow, Visiting, Storm

“Alec, do you trust me?”

They were dressing for work in their one-room, two-chair hovel, by lantern-light and the brightening orange glow of dawnlight through the single crooked window.

“I trust you with all my life.”

One of the many beautiful ways of Alec Scudder was his plain-spokenness; he saw no need to talk around the edges of a thing for the sake of propriety. In others of his class this tendency seemed to those of higher station to come across as coarse or too smart, but in Alec it was only that he was self-assured and earnest. Maurice was simultaneously stung with a pinprick of shock at his frank pronouncements, admiring of his boldness, and enamoured of his honesty. He made the most grand expressions of affection and admiration so easily, so simply.

“Do you doubt it?” Alec asked, after a breath’s-long silence.

“Not a bit,” Maurice assured, fastening his trousers. “Only, I’ve an idea--very nearly a plan--that runs some small risk for us both, but which--if it pays off--I think could be the making of us.”

“I’d follow you anywhere, my dear, and you know it. You only need say the word.”

Maurice smiled, moved close, and kissed him. Folding Alec into his arms, shut his eyes and smiled. “First thing we must do is get a train schedule.”

The morning of their departure from the farm, they packed their meagre belongings into satchels, rolled their blankets, left the beds pushed together--they would never be back there again, and it fed Maurice’s defiant streak to leave evidence of their true nature in their wake for some other men to find--and pooled their money, counting and recounting it to assure themselves they’d enough to get them where Maurice had decided they must go. Just a half-mile into their walk into the village, the thin-grey sky began to snow, and by the time they reached the train depot, their feet were wet and they removed their caps to shake damp clumps of snow from them. Maurice bought the tickets, leaving but a few schillings between them, and his eyes searched Alec’s for any sign of hesitation or second thought. He found none; Alec’s trust in him was profound. Maurice was shaken and had to blink his eyes hard, not a few times.

Two hours later they were on familiar ground, keeping to the wood to stay out of sight. They spied on the edges of the estate, caught glimpses of a few too-familiar faces. Familiar, that was, to Alec only; Maurice was reminded how he had never much looked close enough to differentiate one footman from another, the coachman from the stablehand, and felt a flush of shame at his careless haughtiness. They passed hours sitting the low branches of a tree to keep themselves off the cold ground, and were hungry, but unwilling to express doubt after they had already come so far, and spent all their wages to do so. At last, Alec said, “Here’s a boy what I never saw before. Shall I go and ask him?”

“Yes, do,” Maurice agreed. “But keep on your guard. We must be ready to run.”

Alec nodded, set his jaw with determination, and swung down from the tree to begin a purposeful stroll toward the boy, who pushed a wheelbarrow full of horse dung. Maurice could just make out the sound of Alec’s voice as he inquired, “Is Mr Durham at home?”

The boy affirmed that he was, and did not inquire further of who Alec was or what he might want--a scruffy young man asking for the master of the house was likely looking for employment, surely it was not a rare occurence to meet a stranger in this manner--and after a moment, Alec passed him a letter sealed shut, with instructions it must be delivered without fail. Alec gave him their last three schillings, and the boy tucked both the coins and the note into his pocket, and went back to his work.

“That’s done,” Alec said upon his return. “Where shall we wait?”

“You’re mad, Maurice,” Clive spat through gritted teeth. It was obvious how he strained not to shout, lest anyone discover their meeting place. Maurice hated to corrupt his memories of meeting in the boathouse with his beloved Alec by bringing Clive there, with his inevitable--too predictable--protestations and scorn, but it seemed the safest place and so they’d had no other choice.

“We’ll keep to ourselves,” Maurice insisted. “We can live our lives at a distance, there at the edge of the property. No one goes there, you said so yourself, many times. We’ll never come closer to Pendersleigh House than five yards outside our door. We’ll only walk _away_ \--find work on another estate, or even farther--and no one will know us.”

“It’s so dangerous as to be considered insane,” Clive chided. “Some of the staff are sure to know Scudder, even if you, Maurice, now look nearly unrecognisable--in your tatters and with your rough hands, and stubble.”

“I can keep myself hid,” Alec put in. “I’m not stupid.”

“I do wonder,” Clive muttered, and Alec’s eyes blazed. Sensing danger, Maurice took Clive by the elbow and drew him away, throwing a reassuring glance at Alec over his shoulder as they went.

“You broke my heart and brought me misery, for too long,” Maurice implored. “I think you owe it to me, this favour.” He caught Clive’s gaze and fixed it in place. “If ever you loved me, Clive, you must do this for me.”

“And him?” Clive’s expression was meant to be scornful but Maurice knew him too well; there was pain in the downturned mouth and glittering eyes.

Maurice stayed the course. “I need this, and I know you understand the reason why. Who else am I to go to? In a few weeks’ time, we’ll be gone forever. For now, Clive, please.” He leaned closer, opening his face to show all his vulnerable need. “Please.”

Clive bit his teeth and huffed an angry-sounding sigh. After a moment, he shook his head vigorously, as if to refuse again, but said, “Fine. You’ll stay only until I can make arrangements. This is delicate. You _must_ keep out of sight. If you are caught out, I will not stand up for you. I cannot.”

Maurice, smiling, nodded acquiesence. “I understand. No one will know we’re here.”

Hours later, Maurice and Alec were unrolling their blankets onto a narrow metal bed in an extravagant mini-Pendersleigh built for the children of the estate to use as a playhouse, which Clive had once told Maurice he and his sister had called “the goblin house” in their youth. It was like the real house in miniature, with two-thirds scale furniture in each of its three rooms. Only the single bed was of use to them, and that only barely. Neither cared. They’d made a plan, and trusted each other, and they were safe until they made their next step.

Lying close in each other’s arms, with only the glow of starlight off the dusting of snow to light the room through frosted windows, they traded soft kisses back and forth, trying to forget their growling stomachs and cold hands.

“My dear,” Alec whispered, and kissed. “My dear heart. You’ve done it. And you must know it by now, but I’ll say it right out: I’ll follow you forever.”

Maurice kissed him, held him, brushed the tip of his nose against Alec’s cheek. “Thank you, Alec, for trusting me.”


	7. 14 - Hope

They had to keep the lights low after dark, so as not to draw attention. They were more than a half-mile from the house, at least a quarter from the outbuildings, stables, and even the gardens and parks, but as close as they were to something better, they preferred to take no chances.

And so they ate their cold supper sat on the wooden floorboards with a candle between them, lit a second one to guide them through their end-of-day motions of scrubbing up with rags and a bucket, shaking out the dust from their clothes, trying to make the bed comfortable. It was still too narrow, but it bore the weight of both of their bodies, and though its metal was rusted, it didn’t creak or groan when they shifted.

Alec lay against Maurice’s reclining torso while he smoked his last cigarette, tracing teasing spirals around one of Maurice’s bare nipples, watching its silhouette to see it tighten from the not-quite touch of his fingertip.

“D’you imagine we’ll walk arm-in-arm in the streets there?” Alec wondered.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Maurice replied flatly, and exhaled a lungful of smoke toward the ceiling. “But I don’t imagine it will be so. We shall still need to be discreet, but there’ll be no threat of arrest. No trials. No prison.”

Alec hummed a little, and his hand moved to stroke Maurice’s belly in a languid petting movement from chest to hip, each time nudging the edge of the blanket a fraction lower at his waist. “I haven’t any fear except to be parted from you. If we went to gaol I shouldn’t see you, and I call that a sort of hell on earth. I couldn’t bear it.”

Maurice squeezed him around the shoulder. “Nor I. I don’t like to imagine such a thing. It’s why we’re going.” He put out his cigarette and leaned well over the edge of the mattress to blow out the candle set nearby on the floor. It took a long moment for his vision to adjust, and even then all was silvery shadow, mere suggestions of things. He and Alec lay like ghosts in a light embrace. “Since I’ve had you, Alec, I’ve had happiness, and amusement, I’ve found dignity and fulfillment in a day’s hard work. The indulgence of a hard-earned night’s rest.”

Alec’s hand dove beneath the blankets and fondled him through his small clothes, “And a night’s love games,” he purred cheekily. “And a morning’s. Afternoon on Sundays.”

Maurice moved to align their bodies, place his mouth in kissing distance. “All that and more, and what a prize,” he affirmed, and with strumming fingers worked up Alec’s nightshirt, to bare his backside, so Maurice could shape his hand over its muscular curve and urge him nearer. “But now, at last I think I’m allowing myself a little hope,” he murmured, and ducked to kiss Alec’s throat. Alec lifted his chest and pulled at the back of Maurice’s neck, and Maurice opened his mouth to lap a wet tongue over his nipple, then nipped with his teeth, then closed down to suck. He squeezed Alec’s arse in time, and soon they were both breathing loud through open mouths, clutching and groping with eager hands.

“Love me, my dear,” Alec implored, his voice quiet and roughened with desire. His thick-fingered hands persuaded Maurice by a press of his shoulders, and Maurice obeyed with pleasure, ultimately giving up on fitting them both on the little bed and instead settling his knees on the splintered floor, taking Alec’s rampant, slick-headed prick into his mouth with heated, open-lipped kisses, curling and flattening his tongue, gauging the success of his technique by the mewing and moaning he elicited from his lover, who was as unguarded with his pleasure-noises as he was with his words.

Alec touched his throat, and then his head, stroking his hair tentatively until Maurice found his wrist in the dark and showed him it was all right to guide him, to be greedy, for Maurice wanted to drive him mad with pleasure, even it meant he must hold his breath and wet his own chin with running saliva. Alec made a sound of loud relief at having been granted such silent permission, and at once his hips began to jut in time, and his hand was heavy on the crown of Maurice’s head. When he could get a breath to do so, Maurice hummed a groan around him, and Alec responded in kind with a string of muttered curses that aroused them both.

Maurice would have carried on raw-throated and struggling for breath, content in his servitude, until Alec came to helplessness, but as the moment drew nearer he all at once parted them with forceful movements, and commanded Maurice to, “Come up here and let me kiss you, my dearest, let me put my hands upon you.”

Soon enough Maurice sat astride Alec’s taut thighs, and Alec licked his hands all over, then took both their cocks together and they slid against each other in the ring of his fingers. “Oh, I can see you,” Alec murmured, “You’re beautiful.” Maurice glanced down between them and some trick of the shadows revealed their most intimate touches in a streak of silvery light. “How beautiful you are, dear heart.”

Maurice curled forward over him, and Alec caught him in deep, breathless kisses, as their movements grew urgent, slipping together in Alec’s strong hands. They found the wave, rode it together, whimpering and whispering into each other’s mouths between kisses with thrusting tongues. Alec fell into his crisis with a bitten-off shout, and Maurice wrapped his hand around his lover’s to find his own finish, Alec’s breathless encouragements sounding in his ears all the while.

They rubbed the leavings into the skin of Alec’s belly, licked the tips of their own and each other’s fingers, and eventually sacrificed the corner of a blanket to swipe away the last of it. They slotted together at hips and knees, Alec’s arm around Maurice’s middle and his nose tucked in behind Maurice’s ear, and fell asleep dreaming of a place where they might one day walk arm-in-arm.


	8. 15, 16, 17 - Jolly, Twinkling, Let Nothing You Dismay

Maurice was feeling brave now that Clive Durham had agreed to help them--keeping them stashed away in his childhood playhouse until they were ready to make their next great move--yet a day’s pay in each of their pockets was even more reassurance. He enjoyed the jingle of the coins in his pocket as he and Alec walked back from the nearest--though objectively it was in no way anything like near to Pendersleigh--estate, having spent the day doing handyman chores in the barn and outbuildings there.

“Nice to see you smiling, my dear,” Alec told him, with a smile of his own that made Maurice feel warm, as if Alec were embracing him even then. “You’ve had that worried look for more time than not, these last several days.”

“Have I?” Maurice asked pointlessly, for he was sure it must be so.

As a reply, Alec bunched up his forehead, turning down the corners of his mouth harshly. He mimed Maurice smoking a cigarette, biting down on it, sucking hard at it and blowing out fiercely as if to dispel a lungful of discontent, not just smoke.

Maurice, falsely affronted by this caricature, swooped down a hand and clumped up enough snow to make a small ball, which he threw at Alec’s middle. It landed with a satisfying splat and broke apart, leaving a dusting on Alec’s overcoat.

Instantly, Alec’s eyes twinkled with mischief, and he ran ahead, gathering handfuls into a hefty snowball as he went, and then hurling it. Maurice dodged, but too slowly; he took a strafing against the side of one leg. Laughing, he armed himself even as a second, smaller missile whizzed by him. The rest of the walk home was spent chasing each other, closing and widening distances between them, absorbing the thud of each snowball as it struck. By the time their little goblin-house was in sight, each had hit his target six times, and each was trying to score the final point. Their throws became aimless, hurried as each was to best the other. In the end neither scored another landing, and as they fell laughing through the house’s rear door, they agreed to a truce, and called the match a draw.

“Jolly good,” Maurice praised them as they shook the snow from their boots and shed their outer layers. Alec lit a candle.

“Wish we could put a fire on,” he mused, looking forlornly at the empty hearth. They could not afford to draw attention by sending smoke up the chimney. Maurice hummed and pulled Alec into his arms, bear-hugging him tight to his chest.

“I’ll warm you, I promise.”

“Indeed, you’ll try,” Alec allowed, and rubbed his cold nose and cheeks against Maurice’s jumper. Into it, he said, “I’m tired of always being a bit too cold. Bit too hungry. Bit sore from sleeping in a bad bed.”

Maurice loosened his grip but did not let him go, and dropped a kiss in his hair.

“I know,” he gentled, his voice a low croon. “I know, I know. So soon, though, we’ll be warm all the time. Eat like the kings we are. Sleep sprawled to the very edges of a lovely big bed.”

Alec hummed into Maurice’s neck; Maurice felt his breath in a warm rush against his skin.

“Never fear,” Maurice murmured.”Never worry. Where we’re going, everything will be just right.”


	9. 18, 19 - Gifts, Faith

There came a rap at the door of Pendersleigh’s goblin house, which sent a shock of terror bolting through Maurice for the interminable long seconds it took for Clive to remember himself and announce, “Fellows, it’s only me, Durham.” Alec, sat on the floor, moved quickly to hide his pocket knife and slide himself over so that his thigh covered the scar in the wooden floorboards where he had been carving his and Maurice’s initials.

Clive let himself in, carrying the sort of wooden box in which a week’s worth of potatoes were delivered to Pendersleigh House’s kitchen, covered with a cloth. He was wearing evening dress, with rubbers over his shoes to protect them from snow and mud during the walk to the playhouse, which he must have done by moonlight, as he carried no lantern.

“I never expected to see you,” Maurice said, rising to his feet and taking the box from Clive, but not shaking his hand. “Have you made the arrangement already?”

“No, indeed, though not for lack of trying.” He cast a glance toward Alec, still slouched with his back against the side of the little bed, arms resting on his raised knees. “Trust me when I say I’ll be glad to be rid of you both.”

“Find it difficult, do you sir?” Alec piped up, and Maurice tried to throw him a meaningful glance--as little affection as either of them had for Durham, they were reliant upon him, at least for a little while--but Alec did not meet Maurice’s eyes.

“What’s that, Scudder?” Clive replied, with the scornful, condescending tone and physical attitude that Maurice recognised well. How had he not seen it before? Clive Durham was an arrogant, over-entitled prat, with not a single lick of self-awareness.

“Must be painful to know your old sweetheart is holed up here in your back garden with a man he loves, what isn’t you.”

Maurice’s heart flared with passionate appreciation of his friend’s boldness, but at the same time he felt a wash of panic that he was so quick to poke at such a tender place.

Clive sputtered, and his expression flickered a mere instant of rage before he forced a sour laugh. “I can’t imagine what Mr Hall has told you, Scudder,” he began, slyly highlighting the class difference which made the unholy union all the less forgivable, “But while he and I were once friends, I am not of your criminal persuasion. I’m a married man with a baby on the way.”

“Have you?” Maurice blurted. “Anne’s--?”

“So you see, what you suggest is impossible,” Clive finished, ignoring Maurice’s inquiry. He reached for the cloth draped over the crate he’d brought, and drew it out, and immediately began to fold it. “I can’t imagine what you two have been getting by on, but I was able to assemble something to keep up your strength while you wait. With any luck you’ll be gone in less than a week.”

Maurice peered into the box; there were oranges and apples inside, half a loaf of dark bread, three tins of beans and two of meat, and two brown bottles of ale.

“Have you got any cigarettes?” Maurice asked, and Clive reached for his case, drew out four and passed them over, pointedly avoiding touching Maurice’s hand with his own. “Thank you, it’s kind of you.”

“We were friends once,” Clive said, with a shrug that belied his implication. “I could not let you starve.” He quirked up a small grin Maurice knew to be genuine, and Maurice returned it, offering his hand for a shake, which Clive accepted.

Alec got his feet and claimed an apple, slicing it apart with his knife and passing half to Maurice. Through a mouthful, he begrudgingly said, “I’ve been doubting you, sir, but I’d call this a renewal of my faith.”

With much less animosity, Clive responded, “I appreciate that, Scudder.” After a shuffling, awkward moment wherein the only sound was Alec’s noisy chewing, Clive bowed his chin slightly to them both, and wordlessly left them. Maurice could hear his footsteps crunching away toward the big house.

“That was a bit foolish, taunting him so,” Maurice scolded, but with resignation in his voice.

“You loved him, and that makes me hate him,” Alec shrugged back at him. “And he’s only helping us because he’s a coward, afraid what we could say, and ruin him. His career and position.” Alec said the last of this with a wrinkle of disgust in his expression. “I’ve no use for him.”

Maurice took Alec in his arms and shook him, gave him a disapproving smile. “You have, though, Alec. Use that lovely brain of yours, please, and don’t antagonise him further. It’s such a short time left, now.”

Alec held his apple in one hand, and took a final, huge bite; with his other hand he got hold of Maurice’s rump and squeezed, asserting his possession. Maurice smoothed Alec’s hair back from his forehead, though it immediately did as it liked, and both knew all was forgiven.

“Take me to bed, Alec,” Maurice purred, “You’re my sweetheart now; I’ve forgotten any other.”


	10. 20, 21 - Sweets, Darkness

“Closer, my dear heart.”

“Oh, gladly. But why are we whispering?”

“The darkness wants whispering, just. You know it’s the longest night of the year, they say. They say it, but I’ve had longer ones.”

“Don’t say the boathouse.”

“In the boathouse, waiting for you to come.”

“Will you never forgive me, Alec?”

“Ha. Of course I did already. Forgave it the moment I next saw you. Your sweet head.”

“Are you warm yet?”

“Getting near. Let me put my hands--”

“Not there! Freezing! Here, let me warm them.”

“Mm.”

“Better?”

. . .

“Let me kiss them, then. Ah, there. And here as well. Now, better?”

“Warmer all over, to say the truth of it.”

“The longest night of the year means more time to love you.”

“More time if it’s slow. Or quick, twice.”

“Or thrice.”

“There’s a thing about eyes bigger than your stomach. That’s you, sometimes, with this.”

“What-- _this?”_

“These kisses.”

. . .

“And my fingers, just here. . .Make that sound again, my dear.”

“Come and get it from me, then.”

“Say my name that way you do, and I will.”

“. . _.Alec_. . .“


	11. 22, 23 - Friends and Family, Love

Another day spent doing odd jobs at the neighbouring estate ended with what they had been waiting for.

Maurice pushed open the rear door of the playhouse, and his boot brushed aside a folio tied with twine. As he bent to retrieve it, Alec took the chance to pat his bum.

Once inside, Maurice opened the packet while Alec found candles and lit them--one on the floor, one on the table that held what was left of the food Clive had brought them a few nights previous. He worked at a tin of beans with his pocket knife, prising it open with no little effort.

“Alec, here it is,” Maurice breathed, scanning the papers in his hands over and over, shuffling them into different arrangements to be sure nothing changed. “He’s arranged it.”

Alec set aside his work and leaned over Maurice’s shoulder, holding him at the waist to keep them both steady. Maurice was moving the pages too quickly and after a frustrating minute, Alec grasped his wrist to keep him still so he could read for himself.

“Martin Houghton,” he read. “Andrew St. George. Who’s that, then?”

“It’s us,” Maurice half-laughed. “It’s who we’ll be to make our passage, at least. Once we’ve arrived we can be who we like.”

“I’ll be Alec Scudder all my days,” Alec scowled. “Why would I not?”

“Of course you shall. Alec Scudder is the most perfect man there is.” Maurice turned and wrapped him up and kissed him, held him around the neck so they could both keep eyes on the sheaf of identifying papers, letters of introduction, instructions to household staff, and most importantly of all, tickets on a ship sailing for the continent in just three days’ time. Maurice sighed with contentment and significant relief. “We’re nearly there, Alec. Clive Durham has been a true friend to us.”

“Wants badly to be rid of us, more like.”

“In that case, he’s more like family. No matter, no matter.” Maurice laid the papers aside, tucked between food tins in the wooden crate, and swept up Alec so exuberantly his feet left the ground and he reached for his cap before it fell. “Nothing can trouble us; we’re about to be free of old England at last.”

Alec threw his cap at the bed, but it hit the edge and fell to the floor. “Aren’t you hungry?” Alec asked, laughing into Maurice’s joyful, smacking kisses.

“My love for you is my food. My water and the air I breathe. All of it is only you, my most perfect man.” He carried on with another flurry of silly, sweet kisses all over Alec’s face, each shaped like his smiling mouth. Both laughing, they fell onto the little bed, found their places, one atop the other with legs slotted together and hands just so, breathing the same air. “Alec Scudder, I love you.”

“I love you, my dear. Dear heart. My dear, dear man.”


	12. 24 - Merry Christmas

On the night before Christmas, Maurice and Alec were in a little whitewashed villa with blue-painted shutters, which Clive Durham had purchased years earlier and kept a secret, his place of refuge once or twice a year when he told his wife he needed quiet time alone to contemplate, write, and reflect in order to better serve his countrymen and the Crown. The bright white interior was divided into two spaces--one large room with a view of the bright blue water of the cove held a set of armchairs and a settee, a table to dine at, a little cooker and sink; the second, smaller room held a low, wide bed dressed likewise all in white. The polished stone tiles on the floor were cool against the soles of their bare feet. The wine collection was robust; the tiny house ran with a staff of three: cook, housekeeper, and man-of-all-work. Outside their door was a terrace where they sat and drank strong coffee in the morning and the locally popular anise-flavoured liquour in the evening. They were warm in just their shirtsleeves, and the cook kept them fed at intervals.

In and around the little house, even outdoors, they touched each other’s waists and hands, leaned close to whisper jokes, fixed each other’s seabreeze-disarranged hair back into place. As the moon climbed its way to its height, they sipped glasses of evergreen-scented wine and sat side by side listening to the shush of the waves breaking against the shore below.

“I’ll bathe tomorrow, I think,” Alec ventured.

“I’m sure the water’s too cold to be tolerable,” Maurice grinned, knowing Alec would do as he liked, once he’d set his mind to it.

“Just the once, then not again until summer. It’s so pretty and tempting, though.”

“I’ll join you.”

Alec’s eyes were lowering, and his limbs were loose and sprawling. Maurice tapped the side of his hand with his knuckles.

“You’re drifting, Alec. Shall we to bed?”

Alec hummed, and languidly rose, extended his hand for Maurice to take, and led him into their bedroom. They made love as loud as they liked, in the ways they liked, and then slept naked and entangled, all the night through until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all of you who have followed this little ficlet collection here and on tumblr; it's been a pleasure to write Maurice and Alec's happily ever after.
> 
> I appreciate every comment and have loved reading every one! Merry Christmas, wishes for a healthy and happy New Year, and all other good tidings of the season to you, Lovely Readers.


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